Editorial: "The battle to find a cure for every cancer is evolving"
IT WAS the ultimate selfless act. Knowing he had just months to live, and that any knowledge gleaned would be too late to help him, the man known as Patient Two underwent two last painful biopsies. In doing so, he is believed to be the first person to have his cancer's evolution traced from its first appearance to its last, lethal mutation.
Genomic analysis of his tumours over the span of the disease could help figure out how to stop cancer from evolving its deadliest characteristics – its ability to spread throughout the body and its uncanny knack of developing resistance to drugs.
That is the aim of several research groups around the world who are trying to understand the disease by looking at it from a Darwinian perspective. "The fundamental aspects of evolution are at play ...
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